The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Real (32 page)

What Nony was saying began to sink in. Her country-men actually
needed
her here in the United States. “Oh, Nony.”

“I know. I'm a little mad at God. This isn't the answer I wanted. Maybe Florida was right, in her own way.My deepest concern is for the orphans of AIDS—still such a burden on my heart! But maybe God has planted me here for a reason.”

“For such a time as this.” Nony would know what I was referring to, the Old Testament story of Queen Esther, whom God put in the palace of a foreign government to save her people.

“Yes,” Nony breathed, so softly I had to clamp the phone tighter to my ear in order to hear her. “For such a time as this.” And then, to my surprise, she laughed. “Better pray that the powers that be hold out the golden scepter and give me favor if I'm going to stick my neck out for a hot issue like reparations!”

I WENT BACK TO school on Thursday, and with all the catching up I needed to do, the weekend slam-dunked before Denny and I got a chance to talk to Josh about college. And even then it wasn't satisfactory. “Look,” Josh said, in that irritating, patient way of his, “I don't even know what I want to study in college yet. Taking a year off isn't that big a deal. It's not like I'm going to be brain-dead if I don't go to UIC this fall.”

If it's only a year,
I groused to myself.

“And,” he went on, “Jesus People really needs more volunteers to help with the Cornerstone Festival this sum-mer. Sound guys, like me. There'll be tons of sound equipment for all the big CCM bands.” He was practically drooling.

“But that's just this summer,” I protested, but I got a two-millimeter headshake from Denny that cautioned,
“Chill for now.”
I thought he was dispensing parental patience, a willingness to not push the issue too fast, too soon—till I saw Denny and Josh head for the TV and turn on a game that was already in its first quarter.

The turkeys.

THE TRIP TO TESTIFY before the parole board at Lincoln Correctional was still a week away, and I kept pushing it out of my mind . . . but that third week of March was suddenly swallowed by war—real war. “Shock and Awe.” On our TV screen, the massive nighttime bombing of Baghdad looked nauseatingly like pea soup exploding—all green and flickering, big booms, enormous flashes of light, all from a distance. Josh and Denny were glued to the TV. The mood in our house tiptoed on the edges of morose fascination. All Josh said when I called everybody to supper was a snide, “I don't suppose going to college is a big question for guys my age in Iraq right now.”

I bit my tongue. Denny prayed a heartfelt prayer at the table for all our troops in harm's way, for the protection of innocent Iraqi civilians, for government officials faced with world-shaking decisions, for a quick end to this war, for true peace in the Middle East. Me, I was struggling with my own “shock and awe.” Shock that the United States was at war—but it was all so “over there.” So far away. So easily put out of mind . . .

Oh God! Forgive me for being so self-centered. So callous.
So easily consumed with what concerns just me and
mine. I don't even know how to pray. Terrorism is so . . .
insidious. So irrational. Who is the enemy? Is war the
answer? Oh God! Help us! Help us all!

Only later that night, lying in bed curled into Denny's comforting bulk, the window cracked to bring cool fresh air into our stuffy bedroom, did I realize that the day of bombs and death over there was also the first day of spring.

DENNY AND I CELEBRATED the arrival of spring on Friday evening with our first walk to the lakefront since New Year's Day and the Polar Bear Plunge.We walked hand in hand down Lunt Avenue, past the still-bare trees along the parkway between sidewalk and street, crossed Sheridan Road, and ended up on the bike path along Lake Michigan. By then I was pooped.We found a bench facing the water, and Denny pulled me close. The temperature hung around forty-five degrees, not yet warm, and damp.

We talked about our upcoming trip to visit his parents in New York during spring break . . . about Josh wanting to take a year off before college, but we couldn't
make
him go, could we? . . . talked about Hakim, who had been seeing the school counselor for five weeks and seemed more in control of his emotions but still stumped me when it came to unlocking the brilliance inside . . . did a few updates on Yada Yada: Nony becoming a political activist for reparations, hoo boy! . . . Florida redeem-ing Carla's stay-at-home illness by reading books and more books . . . Carl Hickman doing temp work as a security guard . . .

But even as we chatted, why did I have the feeling that Denny and I hadn't talked about anything real and personal—soul deep—since . . . since Amanda's
quinceañera
? Even then, I was mostly an observer to his daddy's heart. How did he feel about ending up as an assistant coach this year—again—when he had more experience than the head coach and athletic director at West Rogers High combined? What had kneeling beside MaDear's wheel-chair last Christmas and asking forgiveness for the sins against her, taking them on his own soul, done to this man's heart? He rarely mentioned it, except to be glad that Adele had come back to Yada Yada. He hadn't said much about testifying at Becky Wallace's parole hearing either—just agreed to go. He just . . . plugged on. Did his job. Put up with me and all the Yada Yadas. Volunteered one Saturday a month for Uptown's homeless outreach. Loved our kids. Faithful, faithful, faithful . . .

“Denny?” I snuggled closer under the curve of his arm as the lights of the city blinked on all along the shoreline, dressing up the gray lapping water and flat gray sky with sequins of light. “What do you really think about testify-ing at Becky Wallace's parole hearing tomorrow?”

“Funny you should ask that . . . you cold?” Denny pulled me even closer, wrapping both arms around me.

Yes, I was shivering inside my jacket and wishing I'd worn a hat, but heck, who cared? I could feel the rough stubble on Denny's cheek against my face, the faint leathery smell of his aftershave, and he was going to open up his real thoughts. “I'm okay. Funny, why?”

“Remember Pastor Clark's sermon on the story of Ruth a couple of Sundays ago?”

“Yeah,” I snorted. “I've always wondered why couples use that ‘your people shall be my people' bit at weddings, when it was said by a young woman to an older woman.”

Denny cleared his throat. “Uh . . . right. But I was thinking about Boaz, the ‘kinsman redeemer.' Here's Ruth, this foreigner, this young widow, this distant relative by marriage, who suddenly drops into Boaz's life and ends up being his responsibility. By happenstance. He had a choice to marry her or not; nothing was automatic. If he hadn't taken action, Ruth would have remained a foreigner, an outcast, a childless widow, just marking time and space . . .”

I leaned away from Denny's arm and twisted so I could look at him. I almost blurted,
“We're not ‘kinsmen'
to Becky Wallace!”
But in a flash of understanding, I knew what he was trying to say. Becky Wallace had dropped into our lives—kind of like Ruth and Naomi dropping back into Boaz's life after years in a “far country”—and we had a choice: we could do nothing and let consequences take their natural course, or we could act as her “kinsmen redeemers,” helping her to build a new life. At least give it a try.

I shivered. Or shuddered.

BUT THERE WE WERE the next morning at eleven straight up, four of us from the Yada Yada Prayer Group—Hoshi, Stu, Florida, and me—plus Denny, sit-ting in the hallway outside a conference room at Lincoln Correctional Center after a three-hour drive in a foggy drizzle worthy of the Northwest rain forest. We talked and prayed and sang on the way down, feeling hopeful. Denny shared his thoughts that maybe God had called us to be kinsmen redeemers for one ex-junkie. But Florida brought us down to earth as we waited for our turn with the parole board. “Wonder what they gonna think when we walk in?” she hissed. “Denny an' the Four Floozies or somethin'? Ha.”

I giggled nervously. Indeed.We made up an unlikely bunch. A svelte university student from Japan . . . a short, wiry black woman with a big smile and a long scar still evident between her cheekbone and ear . . . a DCFS social worker with dark roots under blonde hair that was a tad too long and straight for someone in her midthirties . . . a third-grade teacher and a high school coach, married with teenagers and not a clue how the penal system worked.

At 11:05, the door opened and a female security guard motioned us inside. The room was small, with an oblong conference table. Three people sat along one side—one man and two women. All white. The man nodded at us and motioned to the three empty chairs along the other side of the table. “Uh, we'll get a couple more chairs.We didn't know there would be five of you.”

The chairs arrived; we sat. For several moments, no one spoke as the three parole board members shuffled through some pages in front of them, as though they were reading or rereading them.We waited.

“An unusual request.” One of the women broke the awkward silence, peering over her half-moon bifocal glasses at us. “I presume all of you signed this letter”—she waved a copy of Stu's letter with our signatures on it—“and were victims of the prisoner in question. Uh”—she squinted at a folder in front of her—“Becky Wallace.”

Our heads bobbed. Denny cleared his throat. “That's right.”

The woman leaned back in her chair, still peering at us over the top of her glasses, a gold chain snapped to each earpiece and circling the back of her neck in case they dived off her nose. She looked like a spinster librarian, may all spinsters and librarians the world over forgive me. The man, middle-aged, flabby chin, balding forehead, his suit a size too small—now, anyway—tapped a pencil on the table in irritating staccato. The other woman—younger, maybe thirties, with straight, thin, brown hair—looked at us up and down the row as though sorting us into different cubbyholes.

“Tell us,” said Woman One, “how you came to be involved in this case.”

I sat there, expecting Denny, or maybe Stu, or even tell-it-straight Florida to speak up—until I realized my cohorts were all looking at me. “Jodi's the one first met up with Becky,” Florida offered. “Go ahead, Jodi.”

I hadn't planned on saying anything,much less being the spokesperson. For a moment, my mouth went dry. This whole thing couldn't depend on
me.
And in the next nanosecond, I realized it didn't. It depended on God. Whatever happened. All we needed to do was put our case on the table.

So I told the story, as briefly as I could, of the day the “Avon lady” appeared at our front door during a Yada Yada prayer meeting, muscled her way into our home, and robbed all of us at knifepoint. Telling the part about Hoshi's mom getting her hand cut was hard, and Woman Two leaned forward and asked Hoshi more about it. The parole board seemed intensely interested in that part of the story and looked at each other when Hoshi said, “But Becky Wallace says she never meant to hurt anybody, and I believe her.”

Florida chimed in—I knew she couldn't keep quiet for long—and said we started praying for Becky, being a prayer group and all. And one thing led to another . . . With helpful bits from Denny and Stu, the story got told.

The man shrugged. “So why are you here? Seems like you good folks have done enough.”

“Good folks?” Florida sounded highly amused. “Why, we nothin' but sinners, same as Becky Wallace, same as you folks, but God's given us all another chance, and we all think Becky Wallace deserves that chance too.We ain't her victims anymore.We're her friends—maybe the only ones she got.An' since you all got an overcrowding problem here an' gonna parole some folks, might as well ask for Becky. Bible says we don't get 'cause we don't ask. So we askin'.”

“Same as you folks”
? I winced, sure Florida had stuck her foot in the cow pie there.

The parole board leaned toward one another, whispered among themselves, pointed something out on one of the many sheets of paper in front of them, then leaned back in their chairs.

“As I said, an unusual case,” said Woman One, peering once again over the top of her glasses, which by now, indeed, did look like they were going to drop off the end of her nose. “We have never, to my knowledge, paroled a violent offender within the first year of incarceration. However . . .” She shuffled her papers for a moment.
“If
we were to consider Becky Wallace's parole in this case, we would recommend house arrest for the first three months and an electronic monitor. The problem is”—she cleared her throat—“house arrest means confined to one's home. And as far as we can determine, this prisoner has no known address.”

And as surely as if a gavel had fallen in a courtroom, our case was dismissed.

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